1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an image processing apparatus which can marker edit an original image.
2. Related Background Art
Recently, a marker editing function for coloring a desired range by surrounding or tracing the desired range on a black and white original by a commercially available marker pen has been proposed. Generally, such a marker editing function has a plurality of modes such as painting mode, line mode, and the like. Namely, in the painting mode, as shown in, for example, FIG. 10A, on an original having a white ground, the inside of a desired closed interval 101 decided by a black line is colored by a blue color marker 102, thereby coloring the whole closed interval in blue as shown in FIG. 10B and printing out the resultant original. In the line mode, as shown in FIG. 11A, on an original having a white ground, a circumference of a desired black line 111 is colored by a red color marker 112, thereby converting the black line into a red line and coloring as shown in FIG. 11B and printing out the resultant original.
A discrimination of the painting mode shown in FIGS. 10A and 10B will now be described.
Now, explanation will be made on the assumption that a scanner having a marker editing function is a scanner of the general raster scanning system using a line sensor.
Now assuming that a reading line at a certain timing is a line A during the reading operation of the image shown in FIG. 10A, in the case where the output order of pixel data is set to the direction shown by an arrow, as for the pixels of the line A, color data is sequentially outputted from the line sensor in accordance with the order of . . . , white, black, blue, white, . . . , white, blue, black, white, . . . Therefore, by detecting the existence of black just before blue which appears first, it is discriminated that the painting mode was started from the first blue pixel.
By detecting the existence of black just after last blue, on the other hand, it is discriminated that the painting mode is finished at the last blue pixel. Therefore, by outputting all of the pixels (blue, white, . . . , white, blue) between the painting modes as blue data, the painting mode is realized.
A discrimination of the line mode shown in FIGS. 11A and 11B will now be described.
When it is now assumed that a reading line at a certain timing is a line B during the reading operation of the image of FIG. 11A, in the case where the output order of pixel data is set to the direction shown by an arrow, as for the pixels of the line B, color data is sequentially outputted from the line sensor in accordance with the order of . . . , white, red, black, . . . , black, red, white, . . . Therefore, by detecting the existence of white just before red which appears first, it is discriminated that the line mode was started from the first red pixel.
By detecting the existence of white just after last red, it is discriminated that the line mode is finished at the last red pixel. Therefore, among the pixels (red, black, . . . , black, red) between the line modes, by outputting the red pixel as white data and the black pixel as red data, the line mode is realized.
Schematically speaking, the apparatus is controlled in the following manner. A starting mode is determined in dependence on whether the pixel just before the pixel of which the color of the marker was first detected is white or black. When the starting mode is the painting mode, so long as the pixel just after the pixel of which the color of the marker was detected lastly is black, the mode is finished. When the starting mode is the line mode, so long as the pixel just after the pixel of which the color of the marker was detected lastly is white, the mode is finished.
However, the scanner with the marker editing function of the construction as mentioned above has the following problems.
When performing the marker edition by the marker editing function provided for the color scanner, various paper qualities of originals are considered. There are also various ground colors depending on the paper qualities. Even in case of the originals of the same paper quality, a color change due to an aging deterioration is also considered.
On the other hand, almost of the commercially available color markers use semitransparent inks in order to leave information of a colored line or character. There is, consequently, a case where the colored area of the marker is set to a color in which the marker color is multiplexed to the ground color of the original and the marker color is erroneously discriminated.